How to respond to the *classic* "religion is the opium of the masses"?

[sidetrack]

If I were to be inability to resolve them,me getting anxious about the lack of skills I have in my life,me thinking myself a loser etc and I read a religion book and someone came over to me and pointed at me saying “Hah!,Marx was right.Religion is the opium of the masses.Look at this fool trying to calm himself down by reading this book about non-applicable to reality non-sense instead of actually doing something about it” ,with what response can that be meet.

In my mind there’s

(i) the route of a long thoruoughly thought out spiel,but this/that takes a lot of time and can be difficult to pull off,off hand/the top of my head.

(ii) the more flippant response but at the same time not really helpful a/o constructive reply of (in the vein of “Trix are for kids” )

"Silly Marx.Religion is the vitamin of the masses.

Being so short-sighted with adding a revolutionary element to socialism that hokies would gleefully use it to enforce and keep maintenence on badly centralized economies and personality cults requiring a whole different product to come outta your “brand” in the form of “cultural Marxism” b/c ppl painfully saw that’s it’s not neccesarily all about economics as a decieving opium for the masses.

*Aside:Erica Jong put a better maybe even keener spin on it by saying“Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed [or masses if you so choose]” which I guess could mean celebrity gossip about the lives of celebrity.

Part of fantasizes this intellectual exercise sorta like what happened on the thread about Bertrand Russel’s “celestial teapot” example.We are all taking a baseball bat/going “open season” on to the pinata that is this well-known/irritating quip regularly visited/seen like a birthday party object .*

 

[boomerang]

I don’t have a clue what you just said, but… about the “Opiate of the masses”, Karl Marx was a commie, and before that the Marquis de Sade said the same thing, and he was a degenerate. So consider the source.

 

[mikeeh]

I don’t think most people who repeat that quote know what Marx was referring to. It wasn’t even a direct attack on religion. Taken out of context it is, but when you put it back into context you find that Marx was critiquing European society. More specifically, Marx was critiquing Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and used his alienation theory as part of his critique. Marx was actually pointing out how life in Europe was so dismal under industrialism during the 19th century that the only thing left the common person had was religion. So religion was the only escape from the harsh life they lived. While I disagree with most of Marx’s theories, I do agree that society should not become so harsh that religion becomes our last resort for happiness. People should have a somewhat comfortable life so they are free to seek religion for spiritual growth and fulfillment.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t think most people who repeat that quote know what Marx was referring to. It wasn’t even a direct attack on religion. Taken out of context it is, but when you put it back into context you find that Marx was critiquing European society. More specifically, Marx was critiquing Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and used his alienation theory as part of his critique. Marx was actually pointing out how life in Europe was so dismal under industrialism during the 19th century that the only thing left the common person had was religion. So religion was the only escape from the harsh life they lived. While I disagree with most of Marx’s theories, I do agree that society should not become so harsh that religion becomes our last resort for happiness. People should have a somewhat comfortable life so they are free to seek religion for spiritual growth and fulfillment.

Slavery and virtual slavery still exist but the Church has always condemned it.

As early as the seventh century, Saint Bathilde (wife of King Clovis II) became famous for her campaign to stop slave-trading and free all slaves; in 851 Saint Anskar began his efforts to halt the Viking slave trade. That the Church willingly baptized slaves was claimed as proof that they had souls, and soon both kings and bishops—including William the Conqueror (1027-1087) and Saints Wulfstan (1009-1095) and Anselm (1033-1109)—forbade the enslavement of Christians.
Since, except for small settlements of Jews, and the Vikings in the north, everyone was at least nominally a Christian, that effectively abolished slavery in medieval Europe, except at the southern and eastern interfaces with Islam where both sides enslaved one another’s prisoners. But even this was sometimes condemned: in the tenth century, bishops in Venice did public penance for past involvement in the Moorish slave trade and sought to prevent all Venetians from involvement in slavery. Then, in the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas deduced that slavery was a sin, and a series of popes upheld his position, beginning in 1435 and culminating in three major pronouncements against slavery by Pope Paul III in 1537.

christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/julyweb-only/7-14-53.0.html?paging=off

It was Christians like William Wilberforce who inspired the abolition of the slave trade by the government in the UK as well as others elsewhere.

 

[GaryTaylor]

Even out of context I think its an ironic double standard as opiate proposed then is an escape by intoxication of vice, same for those who propose the argument and choose to deem what evil is for themselves and others.

 

[Brendan_64]

If religion was the ‘opium of the masses’ then our churches would be packed full. The truth is thst it is difficult, challenging and not easy to be a Christian.

If you want to see what truly is the ‘opium of the masses’ then go to a town shopping centre on a Saturday. Consumerism is the ‘opium of the masses’.

 

[abucs]

A committed socialist / atheist once said that he was enculturated with the idea that ‘religion’ was a drug which kept people down.

He was working with the poor, as a good socialist, but was forced to re-evaluate his enculturation due to his experience.

What he found hard to come to terms with was the obvious lived reality that people held tightly to ‘religion’ and that it was rather a source of dignity which enabled people to be better and have pride in themselves and their communities.

 

[empther]

So. Religion is the opiate of the people, hunh? :ehh:

The answer to this is to point out the misery of sinners.

“….only by destruction I find ease
To my relentless thoughts” – Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost

“Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction **dwell in doubtful joy :bigyikes: :banghead: :crying: **”

–Lady Macbeth after she and Macbeth have murdered the king,
Macbeth, Act III Scene 2

“The tyrant is the most miserable of men” ( because he must fear everybody )
– Plato, Plato’s Republic

 

[MPat]

If I were to be inability to resolve them,me getting anxious about the lack of skills I have in my life,me thinking myself a loser etc and I read a religion book and someone came over to me and pointed at me saying “Hah!,Marx was right.Religion is the opium of the masses.Look at this fool trying to calm himself down by reading this book about non-applicable to reality non-sense instead of actually doing something about it” ,with what response can that be meet.

There are many counterexamples. Actually, that same “someone” might mention Inquisition and Crusades. But those are certainly examples of “doing something about it”. Then there is Vendée. And there is resistance to Soviets - for example, just the current Archbishop of Kaunas, Sigitas Tamkevičius (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigitas_Tamkevi%C4%8Dius), was an editor of an underground publication (“Lietuvos Katalikų Bažnyčios Kronika”) and a member of a committee to defend rights of Catholics (“Tikinčiųjų teisėms ginti katalikų komitetas”). It does look like “actually doing something about it”, doesn’t it?

And if the attack is on religion in general, you can also mention, let’s say, English Civil War…

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Atheism is the opium of the elites.

 

[pacomius]

I don’t think most people who repeat that quote know what Marx was referring to. It wasn’t even a direct attack on religion. Taken out of context it is, but when you put it back into context you find that Marx was critiquing European society. More specifically, Marx was critiquing Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and used his alienation theory as part of his critique. Marx was actually pointing out how life in Europe was so dismal under industrialism during the 19th century that the only thing left the common person had was religion. So religion was the only escape from the harsh life they lived. While I disagree with most of Marx’s theories, I do agree that society should not become so harsh that religion becomes our last resort for happiness. People should have a somewhat comfortable life so they are free to seek religion for spiritual growth and fulfillment.

lots of people also quote Nietzsche out of context for saying ‘God is dead’. just as we tend to take bits of the bible and go 20,000 miles off the track

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I don’t think most people who repeat that quote know what Marx was referring to. It wasn’t even a direct attack on religion. Taken out of context it is, but when you put it back into context you find that Marx was critiquing European society. More specifically, Marx was critiquing Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and used his alienation theory as part of his critique. Marx was actually pointing out how life in Europe was so dismal under industrialism during the 19th century that the only thing left the common person had was religion. So religion was the only escape from the harsh life they lived. While I disagree with most of Marx’s theories, I do agree that society should not become so harsh that religion becomes our last resort for happiness. People should have a somewhat comfortable life so they are free to seek religion for spiritual growth and fulfillment.

People know very well what Marx was referring to. He made the following remark in the same book about Hegel.

“The first requisite for the people’s happiness is the abolition of religion.”

 

[empther]

Atheism is the opium of the elites. :thumbsup:

Atheism is the opium of the guilty. Makes them feel better about themselves, for a while.

 

[Ion]

Atheism is the opium of the elites.

How to respond to the classic “religion is the opium of the masses”?
I think it was an offensive way of saying some truths in order to make them look bad.
Religion provided the morals of the society. Based on this morals, life had meaning, people were generally content with their life, most of them happy. People were oriented towards a peaceful social life. Those times were at the beginning of the industrial/agricultural revolution but in full demographic explosion. I think life was hard but it had sense.
Marx assumed that a poor man can not be but unhappy, the ones that were happy “must” have been like under the influence of a drug.
He considered religion the produce of the society. This is the fundamental error, and this was accepted as truth (???) by all atheists. Probably this error comes from the generalization that the term religion implies, and thinking that all religions are equal?
For sure he had poor religious education.
He had to discredit religion in order to plant his ideas in peoples mind.
I want to add that his ideas was the opium of the atheists who believed that taking the riches from the rich and dividing them to the poor will make everybody rich thus happy. Simple math is enough to check it up, it is false.

 

[Ion]

I don’t think most people who repeat that quote know what Marx was referring to. It wasn’t even a direct attack on religion. Taken out of context it is, but when you put it back into context you find that Marx was critiquing European society. More specifically, Marx was critiquing Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and used his alienation theory as part of his critique. Marx was actually pointing out how life in Europe was so dismal under industrialism during the 19th century that the only thing left the common person had was religion. So religion was the only escape from the harsh life they lived.

Life was hard for the vast majority because the population numbers were growing far faster than the produce.There was just enough for everybody. Escape where and how?
“Escape from the harsh life” this is typically the saying of an addict. Probably you remembered it and took it from Marx texts. And we Catholics do not want to escape hard life through religion! We want to live it at his fullest.

While I disagree with most of Marx’s theories, I do agree that society should not become so harsh that religion becomes our last resort for happiness. People should have a somewhat comfortable life so they are free to seek religion for spiritual growth and fulfillment.

This is called the Chinese drip, you read from Marx and something got stuck into your mind. Like Marx, you assume that somebody can’t be happy in poverty …
Indeed you look up for a job first, because you need o support yourself first of all, but this is part of a larger picture that must be in your mind before you look up for that job.